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Lesson Plans


Re:Traveling Teachers

[ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]
Melissa Enderle (Melissaenderle)
Sun, 12 Jan 97 23:20:02 -0000

Dear Angela,
I definitely can empathize with you. No one can have any idea what
being a traveling teacher all entails. While in Antigo, I also taught at
three schools. While I enjoyed working with the students, I hated
teaching at 3 schools. I never felt that I truly belonged to any of the
schools. I had to deal with 3 different teaching staffs, 3 different
principals, 3 different discipline strategies,....Do you have an art room
at all? At the one school where I had a room, things were much more
easier. I could organize things how I wanted them and carry out more
"involved" art projects, without the fear of negative response by
meticulous teachers in their classrooms.
Traveling is also the pits because of the amount of stuff you have to
drag around. I can sympathize with your difficulties in lesson
scheduling caused by missed days, etc. So, not only does the traveling
teacher have to drag the lesson's stuff around for the duration of that
school's activity i.e. 3 weeks, he/she might be carrying the same stuff
for 6 or more weeks due to the variances in scheduling, student progress,
etc. What incredible amount of orginatization is required!

I now am at one school (in a different school district). Many things
are much less stressful. I don't feel that I am being stretched quite so
thin.

I know things could have been worse. There were 2 elementary music
teachers for 11 schools, covering all of one county and parts of two
others. Traveling the rural roads could be especially hairy during
inclement weather. To top things off,the district was pushing for all
traveling teachers to do recess duty (more minutes than even regular
teachers), irregardless of the amount of time that was traveled.

I sure wish that regular teachers and the administration would have at
least a basic idea as to the difficulties of being a traveling teacher.

>
>I had this situation too, teaching between three schools. For easier
>class prep (not to mention room in back of my car) I usually repeated
>lessons as I moved from school to school. But then the question comes up,
>"Why are my classes doing the exact same projects with differing
>budgets?" The truth of it was that I wasn't about to plan different
>projects all ove rthe place. It ended up where one school just handled
>all the budget requisions and billed the other two schools evenly later.
>I think it took away a lot of the hassle all around and definitely
>made it more fair. (What precipitated the "solution" was how to
>handle the one principal who told me my budget was zero and to use
>only donated materials.)
>